#Meleko Mokgosi

[oncanvas]

The Social Revolution of Our Time Cannot Take Its Poetry from the Past but Only from the Poetry of the Future, Meleko Mokgosi, 2019

Oil and photo transfer on canvas 132 x 72 in. (335.28 x 182.88 cm)

[terminusantequem]

Meleko Mokgosi (Botswanan, b. 1981), Acts of Resistance III, 2018. Oil on canvas, 218.44 x 142.87 cm

[blankoutlines]

[sheltiechicago]

Acts of Resistance, III, 2018, oil on canvas 86 x 65.25 x 1.5 inches

Motswana painter Meleko Mokgosi analyzes collective memory, history, and mythmaking in postcolonial Africa and its diaspora.

Photos by Oriol Tarridas

[thegcwcollection]

heyy hlo, i just want to ask you, who is your favorite painter ( give me 2 names atleast)? I like Johannes Vermeer.

I'm going to give you a list instead

sandro botticelli

caravaggio

inés longevial

chloe wise

alex katz

maria prymachenko

paul gauguin

brett whiteley

zoey frank

meleko mokgosi

lucien frued

antonio lopez garcia

noelia towers

shannon cartier lucy

georgette chen

alice neel

jon sours

julia maiuri

ed rushca

emma amos

hayley barker

joseph yaeger

zoe young

I love a lot of portraiture painters if you can't tell!

[jcmarchi]

MIT welcomes nine MLK Scholars for 2024-25

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/mit-welcomes-nine-mlk-scholars-for-2024-25/

MIT welcomes nine MLK Scholars for 2024-25

Every year since 1991, MIT has welcomed outstanding visiting scholars to campus through the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Visiting Professors and Scholars Program. The Institute aspires to attract candidates who are, in King’s words, “trailblazers in human, academic, scientific and religious freedom.”

MLK Scholars enhance the intellectual and cultural life of the Institute through teaching at the graduate and undergraduate levels, and through active research collaborations with faculty. They work within MIT’s academic departments, but also across fields such as medicine, the arts, law, and public service. The program honors King’s life and legacy by expanding and extending the reach of our community.

“The MLK Scholars program is a jewel — a source of deep pride for the Institute,” says Karl Reid ’84, SM ’85, MIT’s vice president for equity and inclusion. “Scholars who come to us broaden the perspectives of our students in the classroom, and they help power innovations in our labs. Overall, they make us better. It is an honor to advance this program through partnerships with faculty and students across the Institute.”

Headquartered in the Institute Community and Equity Office, the MLK Scholars Program is also working closely with MIT’s new Vice Provost for Faculty, Institute Professor Paula Hammond. “These individuals bring so much strength to us. We want to expand the program’s reach and engagement,” she says. “We want to cast a wide net when we recruit new scholars, and we want to make the most of our time together when they are here with us on campus.”

This year’s cohort of MLK Scholars joins a group of more than 160 professors, practitioners, and experts — all of whom are featured on the program’s new website: https://mlkscholars.mit.edu/. 

The 2024-2025 MLK Scholars:

Janine Dawkins serves as the chief technical director for Jamaica’s Ministry of Transport and Mining. She holds an MS in civil engineering and PhD in philosophy, both from Georgia Tech. Hosted by professor of cities and transportation planning Jinhua Zhao, Dawkins brings a wealth of experience in transportation engineering and planning, government administration, and public policy. One of her areas of focus is identifying a balanced approach to traffic compliance.

Joining MIT in January 2025, Leslie Jonas, an elder member of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, is an Indigenous land and water conservationist with a focus on weaving traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM). She is a founding board member of Native Land Conservancy Inc. in Mashpee, Massachusetts, and earned a MS in community economic development from Southern New Hampshire University. Her work is focused on involving and educating communities about environmental justice, cultural respect, responsible stewardship and land-management practices, as well as the impact of climate change on coastal areas and Indigenous communities. Her faculty hosts are Christine Walley and Bettina Stoetzer, both from MIT Anthropology. In addition to her ongoing collaboration on an MIT Sea Grant project, “Sustainable Solutions for Climate Change Adaptation: Weaving Traditional Ecological Knowledge and STEAM,” she will help foster relationships between MIT and local Indigenous communities.

Meleko Mokgosi is an associate professor and director of graduate studies in painting and printmaking at the Yale University School of Art. He is hosted by Danielle Wood, an associate professor with joint appointments in the Media Lab and Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Mokgosi will join Wood’s Space Enabled Research Group in the MIT Media Lab. His expertise in post-colonial studies and critical theory align with the group’s mission to “advance justice in Earth’s complex systems using designs enabled by space.” In collaboration with Wood, Mokgosi will use art to explore the meaning of African space activities. He earned his MFA in interdisciplinary studio program from University of California in Los Angeles.

Donna Nelson, a 2010-2011 MLK visiting professor previously hosted in the Department of Chemical Engineering, returns to the program sponsored by Wesley Harris, the Charles Stark Draper Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, as her faculty host. She is a professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Oklahoma. Her two areas of focus are on fentanyl data standardization and dissemination and using mindset and personality surveys as performance predictors in her work in STEM education research. Her visiting appointment begins in January 2025. Nelson earned her PhD in chemistry from the University of Texas at Austin.

Justin Wilkerson is currently a tenured associate professor and the Sallie and Don Davis ’61 Career Development Professor in the J. Mike Walker ’66 Department of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University. His research interests include micromechanics and multiscale modeling. He brings to MIT a specialized knowledge in the thermomechanical behavior of materials subject to extreme environments as a function of their composition and microstructure. Zachary Cordero and Raul Radovitzky, both from the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, are his faculty hosts. Wilkerson earned his PhD in mechanical engineering from Johns Hopkins University and received the 2023 National Science Foundation CAREER Award.

Four members of the 2023–24 MLK Visiting Scholars cohort are extending their visit with MIT for an additional year:

Morgane Konig continues her visiting appointment within MIT’s Center for Theoretical Physics (CTP). Her faculty hosts are David Kaiser, the Germeshausen Professor of the History of Science and professor of physics, and Alan Guth, the Victor F. Weisskopf Professor of Physics, both from the Department of Physics. Konig will build on the substantial progress she has achieved in various research projects, including those on early-universe inflation and late-universe signatures. These efforts could offer valuable insights to the scientific community regarding the enigmatic nature of dark matter and dark energy. Konig will organize a series of workshops to connect African physicists with the global scientific community to provide a platform for collaboration and intellectual exchange.

Angelica Mayolo-Obregon returns for a second year co-hosted by John Fernandez, a professor of building technology in the Department of Architecture and director of MIT’s Environmental Solutions Initiative, and by J. Phillip Thompson, an associate professor in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (and former MLK Scholar). Mayolo-Obregon will continue to lead the Afro-Interamerican Forum on Climate Change (AIFCC), a forum that elevates the voices of Afro-descendant peoples in addressing climate action and biodiversity conservation and expand its network.

Jean-Luc Pierite, a member of the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana and the president of the board of directors of North American Indian Center of Boston, is hosted by Janelle Knox-Hayes, a professor in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning and director of the Resilient Communities Lab. Along with Leslie Jonas, Pierite will continue his work on the ongoing project, “Sustainable Solutions for Climate Change Adaptation: Weaving Traditional Ecological Knowledge and STEAM.” He will lead two full practica projects on the integration of Indigenous knowledge in restoration projects along Mill Creek with the City of Chelsea and creating an urban greenhouse model that partners with Indigenous communities.

Christine Taylor-Butler ’81 will build on her existing partnerships on campus and in the local communities in promoting STEAM literacy for children. Hosted by Graham Jones, associate professor in MIT Anthropology, she will complete The Lost Tribes series and explore opportunities to create augmented experiences for the book series. Building on a successful Independent Activities Period (IAP) workshop in January 2024, she will develop a more comprehensive IAP course in 2025 that will equip students to simplify complex material and make it accessible to a wider range of reading levels. 

For questions and more information about the MLK Scholars program, please contact Beatriz Cantada or visit the program website.

[dnaamericaapp]

Alicia Keys And Swizz Beatz To Showcase Art Collection of Jamel Shabazz, Jean-Michel Basquiat, And Arthur Jafa At The Brooklyn Museum

Music power couple Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz (Kasseem Dean) will showcase their extensive art collection next February at the Brooklyn Museum. Dubbed Giants, the forthcoming show marks the first time the Dean Collection will view to the public and includes an extraordinary list of prominent and emerging artists from the Black diaspora.

Housed on the first floor of the institution, the show’s title alludes to the “strengths and bonds between the Deans and the artists they support,” according to a release by the Brooklyn Museum. “Along with examining these links and legacies, the exhibition will encourage “giant conversations” inspired by the works on view—critiquing society and celebrating Blackness.”

While details surrounding the collection are still under wraps, the show will include works from 40 prominent black artists, such as Jamel Shabazz, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Meleko Mokgosi, Derrick Adams and Arthur Jafa. “Swiss Beatz and Alicia Keys have been among the most vocal advocates for Black creatives to support Black artists through their collecting, advocacy, and partnerships,” said Brooklyn Museum director, Anne Pasternak.

Giants will open on February 10 and run through July 10.

We can expect Jamel Shabazz to release his upcoming collaboration book with CARTER Magazine titled: Albee Square Mall: Once Upon A Time In Downtown during the month of February.

DNA America

“It’s what we know, not what you want us to believe.”

#dna #dnaamerica #news #politics

[saddayfordemocracy]

Meleko Mokgosi, “Untitled,” 2020,

Inkjet on canvas,

36 x 24 in. (91.4 x 61 cm)

Part of Artfizz ‘Show me the signs” Auction

[kerimcangoren]

The Social Revolution of Our Time Cannot Take its Poetry from the Past but Only from the Poetry of the Future, 5, 2019

Meleko Mokgosi

[themadscene]

Meleko Mokgosi, Bread, Butter, and Power (detail)

[gagosiangallery]

Meleko Mokgosi at Gagosian Britannia Street, London

September 2, 2020

MELEKO MOKGOSI Democratic Intuition September 29–December 12, 2020 6–24 Britannia Street, London __________ Democracy is incompatible not only with the foundational elements of the human subject, but also with the various systems and institutions that support dominant forms of subjectivity or humanism in general. In other words, democracy is incompatible with structural racism and institutionalized or systemic violence; democracy is incompatible with neocolonialism and neo-imperialism; democracy is incompatible with the instruments that reproduce the conditions for and possibilities of capitalism; democracy is incompatible with race discourse, Eurocentrism, ethnocentrism, and humanism—all of which have become the dominant ways in which reality is conceptualized, interacted with, and historicized. —Meleko Mokgosi Gagosian is pleased to present Meleko Mokgosi’s first solo exhibition in the United Kingdom and Europe, drawn from his grand project Democratic Intuition (2014–19). In works of sweeping scale and scope, Mokgosi combines history painting with cinematic montage, bringing together elements of religious iconography, advertising, and political propaganda from southern Africa and the United States to produce a layering of imagery both foreign and familiar. Reconceptualizing the intersection of art history, postcolonial nationhood, and democracy within an interdisciplinary critical framework, Mokgosi seeks to redress the many ways in which Black subjects have become unattributed objects of empire and institution. Democratic Intuition is an eight-part epic that includes multi-panel depictions of southern African life and folklore; its title is a nod to Gayatri Spivak’s theory that the functioning of democracy is dependent upon accessible education. Mokgosi engages this concept and its internal contradictions through compelling genre scenes—often involving prominent public figures—that jump-cut between the confines of manual work, the freedoms of intellectual enterprise, and their ties to gender and race. A parade of finely drawn characters emerges out of raw canvas backgrounds, portraying the asymmetries of power that underscore traditional divisions of labor.

One chapter in the series, Bread, Butter, and Power (2018), is a twenty-one-panel panoramic painting that addresses the peripheral position of the Black female subject, constricted by the informal economic sectors of agricultural and domestic labor. In one panel, uniformed schoolgirls painted in meticulous detail till a field of soil rendered in broad abstract strokes; in another, two elderly women sit proudly in decorated state regalia; in a third, two women in period dress embrace in an imagined domestic tableau that contains, among other visual cues, a portrait of a defiant young Harriet Tubman, dressed in the black, green, and red of the Pan-African standard; a self-portrait by Cameroonian photographer Samuel Fosso in the guise of Black radical Angela Davis; and Mokgosi’s own protest poster in ANC colors, which refers to the people’s battle cry following the infamous Uitenhage massacre in 1985: THEY WILL NEVER KILL US ALL. In another chapter titled Objects of Desire, individual small paintings of Afrocentric advertisements, Paleolithic cave paintings, and contemporary African objects are grouped together, dispensing with established representational hierarchies. Together with these images are text paintings in both English and Setswana, in which lines from museum wall labels, poems, and dinaane (oral histories) are accompanied by Mokgosi’s own critical marginalia. His annotations confront the erasure of African languages by racist policies under apartheid and reclaim these varied mother tongues. Key references for this chapter were the Museum of Modern Art’s controversial exhibitions “Primitivism” in Twentieth Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern (1984–85) and Objects of Desire: The Modern Still Life (1997), both notorious for framing historical African artworks as anonymous sources for early European modernism. Meleko Mokgosi was born in Francistown, Botswana, and lives and works between Wellesley, Massachusetts, and New York. He is codirector of graduate studies in painting and printmaking at the Yale School of Art, New Haven, CT, and cofounder of the Interdisciplinary Art and Theory Program, New York. Collections include the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, ME; Baltimore Museum of Art; Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA; Pérez Art Museum Miami; and Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Solo exhibitions include Democratic Intuition, Exordium, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2015); Pax Kaffraria, Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester and Rochester Contemporary Art Center, NY (2017); Lex and Love, Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA (2017); Acts of Resistance, Baltimore Museum of Art (2018); Bread, Butter, and Power, Fowler Museum at UCLA, Los Angeles (2018); Selections from the Hammer Contemporary Collection: Meleko Mokgosi, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2019); Bread, Butter, and Power, Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago (2019); Pan-African Pulp, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor (2019–21); and Your Trip to Africa, Pérez Art Museum Miami (2020–21). Mokgosi participated in the 2013 Biennale de Lyon, Meanwhile... Suddenly, and Then. Key chapters of Democratic Intuition were brought together in a major exhibition at The School in Kinderhook, New York, during 2019–20. A catalogue documenting the entire Democratic Intuition project will be copublished by Jack Shainman Gallery and Pacific Editions at the time of the London exhibition. During the exhibition, gagosian.com will host a curriculum and a series of online international seminars organized in collaboration with the artist. _____ Meleko Mokgosi, Bread, Butter, and Power, 2018 (detail), oil, acrylic, bleach, graphite, photo and pigment transfer, and permanent marker on canvas, with plastic sleeve, in 21 parts; 1 part: 108 × 72 inches (274.3 × 182.9 cm), 18 parts, each: 96 × 96 inches (243.8 × 243.8 cm), 1 part: 96 × 132 inches (243.8 × 335.3 cm), 1 part: 84 × 12 × 12 inches (213.4 × 30.5 × 30.5 cm) © Meleko Mokgosi

[oncanvas]

Democratic Intuition, Lerato: Agape II, Meleko Mokgosi, 2016

Oil on canvas 84 x 56 in. (213.36 x 142.24 cm)

[aaagencyyy]

MELEKO MOKGOSI

[jareckiworld]

Meleko Mokgosi  -  Pax Kaffraria: Lekgowa  (oil on canvas, 2014)

[fanceebaby]

“Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.”  

From Frederick Douglass’s 1886 speech in Washington DC in celebration of the 24th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation

[pietroalberto]

Meleko Mokgosi